Tuesday, January 31, 2017

In my recent posts on macro snow shots,
I mentioned I'd be on the lookout for snowflakes and water crystals that show structure... A couple days later on Sunday, 29 January, the flakes were sparse, but falling gently straight down, so went out again to try to capture them with the Canon 100mm macro plus about 5cm of extension tubes. Shown here, I had a little more success. At left is a complete flake, but so fluffy that a lot of fine detail can't be quite made out... The yew "needles" are just under 2mm wide, so this snowflake is about 3mm across!

At right is another structure, more what I was looking for in snowflake structure, but looks to be a conglomeration of incomplete parts. Still worth posting here.

And if you can tolerate one more, after giving up for a bit for lack of snowfall, there was another flurry that tempted me to go out again. At left is the result of a large flake buried deep in the bush foliage that was getting close to melting! Unfortunately, I didn't notice that the focus was up against the limit and the focus stack wasn't very good, but the flake was half melted by the time I set up for another... The snowfall was so spotty and flakes were melting in just a few minutes after falling, so I soon lost interest and gave up...

The only other photos that I was tempted to take over the last weekend were some selfies! Some of you that have read the blog for a while know that sometimes I photograph the weirdest things! I "noticed" for the first time that the knobs on the bathroom cabinet had little "baby moon" reflectors on them, about 1cm diameter. If a macro lens was used in close-up, each of the reflections could be used to construct a 3D image! The image is shown at left. You can see the two images - one from each knob. If you look "through" the image so that you look at the right knob with right eye and left knob with your left, you can see a merged image of my face in 3D! It is very reminiscent of another "accidental" 3D image I discovered in spoon reflections from a post 3 years ago. The image is reproduced at right, but because of the concave surfaces, this is a cross-eyed view, so need to cross eyes to merge images for proper 3D...

Of course, these days I know that most of you don't want to give yourselves headaches by crossing your eyes or free-viewing 3D images. So I performed what I've been normally doing with my 3D images lately and made the knob photos above into anaglyph images, using the red/blue glasses... Check out the image at left while looking thru the glasses (red lens on left), to see it in 3D.

Or, if you want to be mundane about it, you can keep it as a 2D image and use it for a normal selfie image... Kind of boring given the opportunities in a pair of reflections, but ok - for completeness presented here at right! Yes, it was taken in the bathroom on an overcast day with long exposures. I added the golden-cast tungsten lights to keep the exposures short of a quarter second... And yes, that is the camera at right - also seen in the 3D shot above...

And while on the Selfie kick, during several feeding fests with family gatherings of late, I collected a few of myself. I also figured out the "secret" of a successful selfie - include someone a LOT cuter than you to include in the image! Here are a pair of my great-nieces - related by marriage, so they've never met each other. At left is Emmy, and at right is Alivia. See what I mean?! Include someone adorable and you ignore the old coot!

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Credit where credit is due...

All photos are by Dean and Melinda Ketelsen - even the really cool astrophotography ones. Granted, some pics have come from the Internet...such as pictures of actors, or of Miss Tohono O'odham, etc. However, the astronomy pics, as well as the bird pics are all original - compliments of Dean, and sometimes Melinda too! Layout, editing, and continual tweaking (I think they call that "desk top publishing"), well, that would be the work of "I know I can make this better" Melinda!